


Ghost in the Machine

by AJesterNamedFox



Category: RWBY
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-10
Updated: 2015-03-10
Packaged: 2018-03-17 05:23:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3517046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AJesterNamedFox/pseuds/AJesterNamedFox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“There’s so much blood. How can one girl bleed so much? I keep shaking her and telling her to get up but she won’t do it. She’s always the first up for classes so she can blow that stupid whistle, so now that I’m shaking her, why won’t she wake up?” Empty eyes stare up unblinking. Pale lips still hold on to her last weak smile. But her strong arms hold me still to keep me from falling down. Her voice whispers comforting words in my ear. Maybe she’s right; maybe I will be ok as long as she stays by my side.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghost in the Machine

**Author's Note:**

> The descent into madness can be a hell of a ride, but it can be lonely. Maybe bringing a friend or two along wouldn't be such a bad idea?  
> Opens focused on Ruby, while she introduces the story and plot for me ('cause I'm lazy and figured I'd make her do all the work). All other chapters will be first person from Weiss' perspective as long as this moves ahead as planned. So if you come in after I post the next chapter and find it being third person don't complain - I just come up with the plan, it's not my job to make sure everyone follows it. Oh, and shipping is planned, but we've got to work passed some stuff first. Given there isn't much other than some death in this chapter, I don't have much to tag just yet. Feel free to suggest stuff, though!   
> I don’t plan to add more tags until the chapters get posted; so each new chapter will mean a modification of some of the tags.  
> Oh, I definitely do not own RWBY. I doubt I could handle the responsibility.

It's a funny thing seeing your own personal hell open up and swallow you whole. Ruby wasn't sure what to think at first; she had always heard these stories about this singular moment being the most clear in a person’s life. Shining. Perfect. The end of her young life was supposed to be filled with light, warmth, surrounded by lost family or friends reaching out to her with open arms, and flashbacks to happy memories. But for Ruby?

None of that.

Here was a girl who'd trade Crescent Rose and all the chocolate-chip cookies in the world for some of that stuff. Certainly she would have thrown her hands in the air in exasperation if she was able to. But the last fleeting ounces of strength she had were being poured into running her bloodied fingers over her best friend’s knuckles in soothing, sweeping motions.

She and her team had been sent deep into the emerald forest as a personal request by the headmaster. Ozpin felt this was something a skilled second year team could handle. Reports had been coming in for weeks about an unknown type of grimm haunting the trees in the Emerald Forest and occasionally creeping closer to Vale. It had to have been quite old, given all of the information from huntsman saying it never attacked. It would always wait and watch, but when anyone tried to get close it would disappear into the aether as if made from smoke. So Ozpin had felt a reconnaissance mission was in order to determine exactly what was being faced in the ancient woods and report back any information gathered. In the end the huntresses-in-training were woefully unprepared for what they encountered.

In the middle of the third day of the mission the young women caught the first sight of the beast. It was tall, Yang’s height at the shoulder, and had a face like a big cat, but was a monster to its core; complete with glowing red eyes. Ruby had argued with the blonde after the beast left that it may be some kind of puma grimm. The standard bone-plates and spikes covered its body but were thin enough to allow for fast movements and quick maneuvers in the tight undergrowth. They watched it from a distance just as it watched them. Both the huntresses and the grimm quietly surveyed their opponent before the beast made off into the woods again.

Nightfall was when everything changed. The unknown grimm had silently stalked its way to the camp, circling around the clearing the team was sleeping in, and always ensuring to stay beyond the edge of the light cast by the flames. This time, contrary to all the previous encounters with other huntsman, the monster attacked. There was no forewarning of the monster’s intent displayed in its hollow red eyes, it only burst from the brush with deadly speed launching it directly for the sleeping team members. Yang had been on watch at the time and she did everything she could to call out to her team when she became aware of the threat. She launched flares and shotgun rounds directly at the rapidly approaching beast to ward it from her yet unprepared teammates.

Nothing would deter it from its task: not when there was fresh meat lying ripe for the picking within its territory. Ruby woke with a start at the sound of the blasts, aware on some level there was a threat but after three days and nights of constant fighting and hiking through uneven terrain she was slow to wake to a fighting state after such a deep sleep. The first swipe of the monsters claws sent her reeling across the clearing and bouncing off of a tree trunk. Her aura didn’t have time to build a protective layer to save her from the claws raking her flesh or the tree halting her flight. It had all happened to fast when she was still to deep into her turn to sleep. The light in the clearing felt smudged across her eyes when she was finally able to open them again. She tried to get up and join the fray but the action brought on a wave of nausea that threw her back down. Darkness took hold of the team of surprised huntresses when the grimm stomped out the fire with one heavy paw, a low growl punctuating the now completely eclipsing night. A flare fired into the sky by Yang lit up the makeshift arena with the cat-like grimm surrounded on three sides by the huntresses. As the flare fell back down towards the battlefield, giving its last sputtering flashes of life during its fall, the fight began.

Ruby lay motionless at the base of the tree, through the darkness only hearing the sounds of the battle raging around her. She couldn’t tell what the outcome was when the cacophonous fray finally ended. There had been so much noise from both sides, but no clear winner could be determined by the sounds made alone. Rumbling growls and claws against trees or stone from the grimm. Flashes of dust-borne light or pistol and shotgun blasts from her team. It wasn’t until she heard them calling her name she knew they were victorious. How long had she been lying there? Why could she hear them crying? Why did every muscle feel tense, but nothing truly hurt?

“Ruby!?” Weiss’s sharp voice cut through the encroaching darkness on the edges of Ruby’s vision to bring her back to the moment. The lithe body of her friend crashed into Ruby and immediately took her into quaking arms.

“Ruby!” Her voice was full of fear; the singular spoken word more of a scream the second time it was called.

The only sensation the young huntress could clearly make out, as Weiss’ sobs shook her against Ruby’s body, was the steady drop of the heiress’ tears on her leader's cheek. Everything else felt muted to her. The fingers gripping her cloak so tight the hand shook, a hand supporting her head, the smell of gunpowder and blood, even the smooth, cold knuckles slick with blood under her fingertips; everything felt fleeting.

“No, no, no...” Yang’s voice broke the silence surrounding the sobs of each of the girls, constantly repeating that one word; her warm hands cupping Ruby’s cheeks as she repeated her new mantra. Blake stood frozen a pace behind Weiss, silent, looking down over her shoulder with dull golden eyes taking in the whole scene but looking entirely devoid of the soul hidden and slowly breaking inside.

Ruby knelt down beside Weiss wrapping her arms around the pale girl to offer some comfort but she made sure to keep her eyes shut tight to shield her sight from the crimson surrounding them. Weiss’ combat skirt and leggings were soaked with the blood, but none of it clung to Ruby. Though it didn’t cut her skin, the cold steel of Mytenaster throbbed along the length of Ruby’s leg from where Weiss had dropped it in her haste to scoop up her injured friend. Everything moved through her senses in a transparent haze. Despite it all feeling like a poorly manufactured dream she could only focus on her friends. When she spoke to tell them she’d be ok her voice came out weakly. “It’s ok, I’m alright! I’m not going anywhere, don’t worry. It’s alright.” None of her friends reacted to her pleading cries. Even the girl in her arms felt like a shadow draped across her chest. Why couldn’t she make them react to her?

She stood up and turned towards Blake, the faunus wiping tears from her golden eyes. “Blake?” Just like before there was no reaction from her friend. “Blake, it’s ok!”

They couldn’t hear her. She had felt Weiss in her arms; maybe she could make them feel her touch? She moved to step forward but was held back. Her foot was pinned to the ground by the tip of Myrtenaster. “Wait, what…?” As she looked more closely Ruby could see the tip was clearly inside her foot, her aura in the area surrounding where the tip was piercing her foot causing the blade to glow faintly. She reached down to wrap her fingers gently around the blade and it started glowing again in reaction to her touch. As she gripped the false edge along the back of the blade with both hands she noted her foot no longer felt trapped by the weight of it; she was free to slip out from its restrictive hold on her. She couldn’t move it for all the strength in her body but when she relaxed Ruby watched the fingers of her left hand pass through the blade. Normally she would have been willing to explore the effect further, but she was focused on the fact that now it was her right hand that was fused to the blade’s edge.

Panic started to set in, closing in on the edges of her vision immediately and pounding in her ears. She tried to pull her hand free by planting her feet in the dirt and kicking at the rapier but nothing freed her. Ruby called to her friends and sister to help her. To save her from this nightmare. But they still focused only on the red clad body in the heiress’ arms. “Oh, no…” _It can’t be…_ Ruby paused to take another look, setting her foot in the blade so she could pull her hand free. It worked and she was freed in so far as she was pinned by her foot again instead of her hand.

Placing her palms on Weiss’ thin shoulders, Ruby moved herself so she could see passed her friend while still fighting against the blade’s edge pinning her to the dirt. She could slide her foot along the length of it, but could never leave the contact of the metal or move it for herself. The encompassing fear had taken its toll on her; all of her thoughts were already frayed at the edges so now, looking down on her own body, she couldn’t even muster the strength to release the scream burning in her lungs. It was obvious her body was beyond saving. She, or rather her body, wasn’t drawing breath and with the thick sanguine pool around them Ruby was sure they was nothing left in her body for her heart to pump even if it could. Ruby brought her hand to her lips to help clench back the bile in her throat but she knew even if she let it out nothing would happen. What bile could she produce in her current state? The skin of her body was well beyond its normal pale demeanor now nearly translucent and gray. The gouges dug by the grimm’s claws ran across the back of her neck and shoulders deep enough she could see her bones, broken as they were. Silver eyes watched on unblinking, pupils dilated completely, and whites splashed with red – probably dyed by shattered blood vessels from the impact with the tree that had ripped open a line of flesh from her blood soaked hair to her eyebrow.

“I’m dead…” Ruby fell onto her backside, hand taking a place in the sword near the guard to free her foot and allowing her to stretch out.

“Yes, you are.” The voice startled her as it bubbled up from nowhere. It was hauntingly hollow in a gentle pitch that reverberated about inside the crimson girl’s mind. She’d have jumped, fruitlessly to get away from a voice coming at her without direction, but she was held in place by the weight placed on her aura by Myrtenaster. The voice came again, lighter this time but still echoing inside her mind. “And fast enough to outrun Death, it seems, too.”

The brunette frantically searched for the source of the voice but found nothing other than the darkness around the clearing and the neon green pall swallowing her friends from the chem-lights someone had lit. “Who are you!? Where are you!?” She tried to stand but her hand was trapped by Myrtenaster’s handle.

“Who, my dear, is a question I cannot answer. I am simply the after. I am more of a what: a warning in the shadows of your un-life. I exist here only when you exist here: when you fade from this place, so too shall I fade.” The monotone voice spoke the facts as if each should have been common knowledge. It was almost condescending in its calm explanation.

Ruby took a moment to ponder the implications before finding herself stuck on a single point. “What do you mean ‘fade’?”

“I dare not fail to remind you, my dear; you cannot hide from Death forever. There will come a time when the reaper will catch up to you and you will cease to exist, even in this state.”

“When?” Her voice was hopeful though the line of thought depressed her some. If she could only watch as her friends and family spiraled into darkness she didn’t want to bear witness to any of it. She would rather fade now but if there were even the slightest chance she could fight to make one of her teammates smile again she would stay as long she could.

“I cannot say. It may be an hour from now, a day, a thousand years… Time has a way of slipping through your fingers when your heart isn’t counting the seconds.” A puff of breath from an unknown source sounded almost like a short mocking laugh let out through a person’s nose.

Confusion etched itself into Ruby’s expression. “Can you tell me how this can happen, then? I mean if I’m dead, how am I still here?”

“Souls can be bound to the things our auras are poured into. Some part of your spirit must be inside that sword to have latched on to it in such a way. Now your continued existence seems to be twined to it. That is until you inexorably fade from this world.” The explanation still felt to Ruby as if the voice was talking down to her like a she was a child.

_Awesome, that wasn't creepy at all..._ “So because I reforged Myrtenaster's blade for her, when she broke it during the tournament...?”

“A very possible explanation.”

She was starting to slip deeper into frustration with the situation she was literally trapped in. The voice only wanted to talk in riddles and if she couldn't interact with her friends how was she supposed to do anything? Ruby refused to be useless when her friends needed her so much. She was so close to them. Close enough she could reach out and feel the pulse of each of their auras, but nothing she did would get them to focus on her. She looked about the clearing to try to regain some measure of awareness of the situation. Sometime while Ruby was talking with the voice in the dark, Weiss had laid her head down on Ruby's body's chest. The white clad girl, splashed with red, was almost completely still. Unmoving as the girl she lay with. The heiress' breathing was shaking her body as sobs still wracked her frame, her eyes closed tightly to block out the bleakness of a world without her first real friend. Maybe she'd gone to sleep or slipped out of consciousness in an effort to escape the pain? Ruby wished she could reach out and tell her partner everything would be alright. Blake had slipped around near Ruby's head, a single hand running through the bloodied hair, peeling away strands matted to the cold flesh of the younger girl's face. Whatever makeup the faunus still had on when they'd set up camp was washed away by the tears leaving scars of black pigments streaking down her cheeks onto her chin and neck. Blake's eyes had dulled further since Ruby had last looked at them. Now she just stared down into the open, empty eyes of her leader. Even her sister's sunny disposition had been broken. The shining girl was leaning back against the tree Ruby had been thrown into, sitting in the pool of her little sister's blood. The normally platinum flames that shrouded her body were burning a dull red so deep it was nearly black. It constantly licked at her edges, rolling around her curves, the flames were cool enough they weren't consuming the tree the fiery fighter was leaning on.

“So what? I just get dragged around until Death decides to pick up the pace?” If she could cry she would have, instead she let her expression fall and drew back a deep breath to release a long sigh.

“Yes. You are an aura fused to the ores of that weapon. Allow yourself fall completely into it and you will find rest, but not your freedom from this world. You are bound until the day the Spectre of your end comes to claim you. Be careful of the lost time, though, when you close your eyes too tightly. The light is hard to look at when you've spent too long in the dark.”

Ruby took another look at her friends. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad if she could just find a way to reach out and make them feel her presence. Idly she ran her hand over Weiss' forearm. It was the only thing she could reach while stuck to Myrtenaster like she was. “Don't worry, team, I'll be right here no matter what happens.” Letting out a short sigh, Ruby prepared herself as best she could before closing her eyes and letting the feeling of the rapier fill her senses.


End file.
